Can you describe the main characteristics of RESTful API and what distinguishes it from other approaches?

RESTful API is an architectural style for creating web services based on REST (Representational State Transfer) principles. Main characteristics of RESTful API:

• Client-server architecture: client and server are separated, simplifying development and scaling.
• Stateless: each request from client to server must contain all necessary information; the server does not store state between requests.
• Uniform interface: standard set of HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) is used for resource operations.
• Resource-oriented: all data is represented as resources identified by URIs.
• Cacheability: responses can be cached to improve performance.

Compared to other approaches like SOAP, REST is simpler, uses standard HTTP protocols, and is lightweight. RESTful APIs typically use JSON or XML for data transfer.